Community Corner

Brighton Brothers Author First Children's Book

Blake and Mitchell Brooks are seniors at Brighton High School.

What started out as a mixture of projects from video production and math class has turned a pair of Brighton twins into published authors.

Blake and Mitchell Brooks, seniors at Brighton High School, recently released their first children's book, The Monkey and the Star.

The boys came about their idea for the book in a convoluted way after listening to commentary on an episode of South Park, by talking to one of their friends about toys lying around in her room and two assignments from classes at school.

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The rhyming just kind of happened on its own, according to Blake.

"We would read it in class," he said. "We never intended it to be a book, it was just for fun."

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Both Blake and Mitchell began writing the story during their sophomore year in 2011, while Mitchell worked on illustrations without his brother knowing.

Blake said his favorite thing about the book were the pictures.

"When we wrote it, we just typed it up, so it was just a word document with couplets of lines," he said. "I didn't even know my brother was doing this, but he would draw a picture then write the words at the top or bottom of the page and one day he just handed me a copy of the very first sketched out drawings. And from the first time I saw them, I just thought they looked awesome."

Mitchell said illustrating was also probably the hardest part in the whole process.

"It was hard just figuring out how to block out which sentences went to which picture or how many pages to have because I didn't have any experience doing it before," he said.

However, holding the finished product in hand, was well worth the hard work, according to Mitchell.

"We had a PDF file and saw the entire thing and approved every little bit of it, but there's nothing like holding an actual copy," Blake said. "I just want to show it to everyone."

Blake and Mitchell will be featured during the Hilton Elementary Book Fair - their former school - which will take place March 4, 5 and 6.

In addition, the Hilton Media Center has already purchased copies of The Monkey and the Star for checkout. Media specialists in other schools in the district are currently obtaining copies as well.

Monica Brooks, the boys' mother, said she didn't know how much work her sons were actually doing on this project.

"I never dreamed it would become this," she said. "We're so proud. They're very creative, they've written stories, they make videos, so it wasn't anything that was surprising at all."

Blake and Mitchell's story is not ending - they currently have plans to write another book - especially now that they know what they are getting themselves into having been through the process. 


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